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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29081667">A Collection of Happenings That, When Taken Together, Start to Shift the Fate of the World Just a Little Bit to the Left</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indefinite_article/pseuds/Indefinite_article'>Indefinite_article</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Snail AU [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Piece</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, POV Outsider, sea kings - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:54:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,716</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29081667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indefinite_article/pseuds/Indefinite_article</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It would be the height of folly to assume that these developments would not be noticed. Fortunately, nobody is so informed as to know what, exactly they're noticing</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Snail AU [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2122140</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Collection of Happenings That, When Taken Together, Start to Shift the Fate of the World Just a Little Bit to the Left</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Now we see the effects of the changes!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Soldier MSP-793 had seen many unusual things, in his post outside this door. He would call it by name, but it doesn’t have one, or not one that he was allowed to know. He’s even been admonished for giving it a name by himself, so it’s just a door. Just a door that his assigned post is outside of, that his post has been outside of every other day for years.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He shook his head, standing to attention as he heard footsteps echoing down the corridor. The person they belonged to was...strange. Their face was entirely covered and the rest of their outfit and gait would fit in with the scientists that he saw often, but something about them feels familiar. Does this count as a reportable situation? The strangeness was in line with what he often saw in this post. But if it was something he had to report and if his excuse was that it wasn’t out of the ordinary for the door, the door he wasn’t supposed to pay any particular attention to, he’d be in trouble.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His brief crisis was quickly halted as the figure held out an all-access pass. Right, that was okay then, he’d stand guard at his post and acknowledge the VIP and let them in <strike> the </strike> this door and they’d go through and he’d be able to calm his breathing down to an acceptable rate. Yes. Just go to the lock, enter in 1-2-5-1-4-4-6, open the door, stand aside and close it after. Done.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’d just about got his breathing under control, forced his senses to focus on the outside world again, when the person left and, as they passed him, they said one thing:</p>
<p>“Let the memory burn away like the autumn bonfires.”</p>
<p>Okay then. That made it all easier.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>What was he thinking about again? Oh yes, the unusual things he saw on this post. He wondered if anything would happen today, it had all been pretty unremarkable so far. Maybe tomorrow on his training room shift the princess would do some more sparring, she was always impressive to watch in action, he always strained his senses to know as much as he could about what she was doing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As she floated along her patrol route, Samaki enjoyed the feeling of the grass by Hard-Shell Tower brushing by her tail. There was a certain exotic feeling that came with the act of touching surface plants, the way they were so sharply defined, the way they stuck up without any sort of pattern, the way they moved without resistance with the slightest movement. She had just tilted herself upward to check on the creeper beds when- was that a <em> sea king? </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>She startled, losing her balance in her bubble and having to struggle to turn up again. No, thank the queens of the deep, it was just a particularly expressive cuttlefish. With a closer look, she could see an ill-fitted bubble around it, refracting the bright colours into something that, at first glance, seemed much more monstrous than it was. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Though those colours were interesting in themselves, was it talking to someone? It took lots of skill from a mermaid to talk to almost exclusively visual communicators like cuttlefish. It was outside of the princess’s window… Samaki would have to mention this to her commander, to see if this was a sign that Princess Shirahoshi’s education would have to be sped up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Duncan, seaman first class, stood there, slightly slouched, as he guarded the Bridge of Hesitation. He didn’t really see the point in it. Sure, there were dangerous pirates carried across it every day. But they all had guards of their own! Groups of guards of varying sizes and skills according to the prisoner’s skillset. So that during the slow days, like now, when all there was to escort was a single untrained shipwright, skilled officers wouldn’t have to waste their time. So why were at least <em>two</em> first classes obligated to stand watch at the end of the bridge for eight-hour shifts? </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He knew it was probably something about reassuring civilians; Lady justice knew they were excitable. There was a rumour going around yesterday that someone tried to stop the sea train with their bare hands! Honestly, the train was delayed for five minutes and the wildest stories emerged. It was clear that one of the Sea Kings lurking around recently had just gotten spooked and swum in front of the train, causing an emergency stop while it got out of the way. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Speak of the devil, Duncan could just see the tip of a fin racing through the Tarai current. Maybe it was the same one; it certainly didn’t seem to be slowing down as it approached the bridge. He was about to yell a warning to the group on the bridge when a surge of water knocked him back. It had...It had launched itself out of the water and gotten stuck on the bridge! He twitched forward, unsure of the state of his comrades and unwilling to get caught in the thing’s writhing. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>After a brief moment of confusion and shock, it managed to wriggle off and slip into the sea, heading directly away from Enies Lobby. Duncan ran straight for the shapes on the far side of the bridge, taking a quick headcount. No one was missing but the prisoner. Thinking of the Sea King’s actions, they’d probably been eaten and given it the energy it needed to escape the currents. He guessed that was a quicker death than if they’d lived to reach Marineford and put it out of his mind. He had to get these guys checked by a doctor.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sugar hummed absentmindedly as she speared another grape. That one-legged soldier was an interesting conundrum. Her normal procedure with toys was to write down at least who they were and what they’d done to get turned before she used her powers, but there was nothing in her notebook about anyone who fit its profile. Of course, it could have been a sudden act of self-defence, but none of her older ones had anything either. She was careful to record a reading of every finished notebook on her personal Den Den Mushi so they couldn’t have been tampered with. Besides, Doffy had been right there in the room too so he should have been able to take care of any real threats. She supposed it must have been a minor annoyance that he hadn’t seen the need to take care of personally.</p>
<p><br/>
Even if it had been a competent fighter, the self-styled ‘Thunder Soldier’ hadn’t done anything noteworthy. It occupied most of its days with odd jobs, collecting shopping, feeding the Den Den Mushi and cleaning houses. Even at night in the Underground Trade Port it worked as tirelessly and as well as any other toy. The only sign of difference was its prosthetic leg, carved and painted to look just like its real one and that wasn’t even so unusual. It seemed that someone was making replacements for the toys that were missing pieces.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Ah well, she thought as she impaled another grape, it wasn’t disturbing their plans in any way and she had better things to occupy her thoughts. Like that statue in Corrida Colosseum that claimed to represent a gladiator with a winning streak of 3000. It was clear it was an old legend of some sort but she thought that if they sent people there to clean the wear of age from it the fighters could be given false hope regarding the possibility of their task. It probably wouldn’t start to affect them for several years, but once it did that simple statue could be an instrument for some wonderful psychological warfare.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Zeff had been acting weird, Sanji thought. He’d started setting aside an hour each day when he would sit in his office with a locked door, and nobody was allowed to disturb him unless it was an emergency. He’d also started changing his behaviour towards Sanji, becoming less gruff and more… well it was more of a less than a more. Sanji didn’t get it. He didn’t get what was happening before either, but now it was different and he didn’t know why. So he decided to find out. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Earlier in the day Zeff had mentioned that he’d be busy for two hours, rather than one, and Sanji figured that whatever was different about today could result in some more information being let slip. Drawing on his fuzzy memories of his stealth lessons with his siblings, he scoped out the office before the mentioned time, to see if there was any context he could find. Despite his best efforts, the only thing that was out of the ordinary was a list by the Den Den Mushi, affectionately nicknamed Kohli. It was full of recipes and meal ideas with large alterations and substitutions. The list used the shorthand Zeff had developed for dealing with allergies and other dietary restrictions but Sanji couldn’t think of any combination of them that would cause such a seemingly random array of ingredients to be foregone. He looked up, directly into the snail’s tired but open eyes, and decided that he’d just have to try to listen in, rather than stand there and be spooked by eerily active gastropods. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Unfortunately, it seemed that he wasn’t as good at stealth as he thought he was. No sooner than he put his ear up to the keyhole to listen in the door swing open, and his startled stumble was caught by Zeff’s callused hands. </p>
<p>“Snooping around, eh brat?”</p>
<p>“Well, you didn’t tell me anything about what you were doing!” Sanji couldn’t help but retort, trying to suppress the heat that was creeping up around his ears. “Of course I got curious!”</p>
<p>Zeff opened his mouth before noticeably thinking, “Really though, little eggplant, trying to listen through doors is never the first thing you should do to get information. Try listening in on the customers’ conversations when you’re waiting tables, see what you can find out.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sanji was so indignant at the implied insult to his capabilities he immediately began planning ways to show Zeff how well he could information-gather without noticing how thoroughly he had been distracted from his original intent.</p>
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